Staying in Hotels

We stayed in eleven hotels over the course of our Road Trip! and so I feel as though I have some very recent expertise in What Hotels Are Like Lately. (By the way, because my husband is a Credit Card Rewards Black Belt, we stayed in nine of them for FREE.) (Or, as I like to point out, for points, which is not quite the same as free, although my husband vehemently disagrees with me.)

First of all, I want to acknowledge that it is clear the hospitality industry is struggling. The hotels we stayed at ALL seemed to have staffing issues, and I know this is a nationwide problem, and that it is affecting the hotels and the people who do work there much more than it is affecting me. Aside from one receptionist who stalked straight past me and another hotel guest without saying “I’ll be with you in a minute” or even glancing at us, the hotel personnel we encountered were friendly and helpful and doing the absolute BEST they could. 

Don’t get me wrong! I am glad hotels exist. I vastly prefer a hotel to, say, staying on the floor of a friend’s house or finding an AirBnB or sleeping in my car or renting an RV. But for all their benefits, they DO have deficits.

It seems to me that the people who design hotel rooms have never once stayed in a hotel room, or perhaps even A Room of any sort. They are all caught up in The Design – which I acknowledge probably helps draw clients – and not caught up enough in The Usability.

• I Love Lamp: We had not one but TWO hotel rooms that had a dearth of lamps. In one hotel, we had a two-room suite. There was a bed in each room, with a nightstand near each bed… but only one room/nightstand had a lamp. In the other hotel, there were NO LAMPS AT ALL. Just overhead lighting. Both rooms had overhead lighting, but you had to extinguish the lights from the door, which in both cases was across the room from the bed. While I am aware that furnishing all the rooms in a hotel must be quite pricey, surely a lamp by each bed should have been part of the budget???? 

This photo is a LIE. Straight from the hotel website, it features a DESK LAMP which was not present in our hotel! The lack of bed-adjacent lighting is true-to-life though.

• Were You Born in a Barn: Hotels are obsessed with barn doors – OBSESSED. Maybe this is the Magnolia Effect in action (although I didn’t see any shiplap), but I am guessing that hotel designers drool all over themselves at this perfect intersection of Trendy and Space-Saving. The majority of our hotels had barn doors for the bathroom. They are lovely, but the thing is that barn doors are gappy. They do not shut as firmly as regular doors do. Which is something I MISS A LOT when I am sharing a very small space with other people and our collective bathroom needs. (P.S. This little marriage saver has accompanied us in Europe and now across the U.S. and I love it.)

One of many barn doors.

• Party of One: Except for our very last hotel, all of our rooms were meant to hold at least two people. They each had two queen beds, and could have fit up to four people. Four! People! But the rooms are very clearly geared toward ONE PERSON, MAYBE TWO. The nightstands were inevitably between the two beds, so that the person on the outer side of the bed had nowhere to put his/her glasses, phone, watch, books, etc. etc. etc. Several of the lamps – which, when they were provided, were on the shared nightstand – were controlled by a single switch, so that both beds had to agree that it was time for lights out. In our last hotel, the one hotel where we had a king bed (and a sofa bed for Carla shudder), my husband’s side of the bed (he always sleeps on the left) had the nightstand and mine had nothing. Worse: His side of the bed had multiple outlets and mine had… nothing. Other nights, when I wasn’t the lucky one to have a nightstand, I was able to at least plug my phone in next to the bed and set it on the headboard or a window sill or something.

This is the most uncomfortable sofa bed known to man. The “mattress” was a thin layer of cloth stretched so tightly over the springs you could see every single spring. We had to put the couch cushions on top of the “mattress” and then put the sheets over the cushions.

• Carry In, Carry Out: Hotel rooms have the smallest trash cans I have ever seen. At one hotel, the single trash can was divided into two identical sections – one for trash, one for recycling. The recycling side fit a single plastic water bottle. 

• No Sleep Til Brooklyn: If you want to control your room’s temperature, you will not sleep. Not one wink. Because the air conditioner/heating unit will roar on at unexpected intervals all night long, clattering and moaning and blasting out air that is at least ten degrees hotter/more frigid than you anticipated until you give up and turn it off and succumb to the ambient air temperature. 

• Form Over Function: One of our hotels had a beautiful armoire with an interior light that turned on when you opened the doors and a fancy teapot and a mini Nespresso machine. It had neither a refrigerator nor an extra roll of toilet paper. One of our hotels had a gorgeous little coffee station with three pouches of local coffee but it was the hotel with ZERO LAMPS. I would rather have lamps than local coffee. (Side note: the place without the extra toilet paper was also the place with the miniature garbage can. I called down to housekeeping, requesting more toilet paper and a garbage bag. The kind housekeeper showed up with two garbage bags, one mini-sized to fit the trash can, one an enormous lawn-and-leaf sized bag. I took the latter, thanked her, and shut the door… only to realize that I perhaps should have reassured her that nothing horrifying had happened to necessitate my odd combination of requests.)

• And the SHOWERS. This should technically be part of the previous bullet, but it drives me bonkers enough that it deserves its own. So many showers now have the rainfall shower heads. You know – the ones that stand directly above you and drench you? I cannot STAND those stupid shower heads. You can’t get away from the water! If I want to apply shampoo to my head or face wash to my cheeks, I have to step completely out of the line of fire water and freeze my tuchus completely off to do so. I much prefer the standard shower head. MUCH. Also, hotel shower designers have never taken a shower before. They do not understand that most people need various accessories to help them get clean: soap, shampoo, conditioner. Maybe a razor. Maybe face wash. Maybe body wash. But no. If you shower in a hotel, you are lucky to get one tiny triangular shelf that can barely accommodate a bar of soap and one of the eensy hotel-supplied bottles of shampoo. Unless I am in a hotel that has a bathtub/shower combo, I never know how I’m supposed to shave my legs. My own at-home shower has a little ledge upon which I can rest my foot. But when I’m in a hotel, I have to balance precariously on one foot while I shave the other leg or try to prop it up against the questionably-clean shower wall or bend over and get a mouthful of water while trying to shave. Further proof that hotel designers do not shower: We had one hotel with a BEAUTIFUL shower – fancy stone tiles, rainfall shower head, glass door. Except that there was no door – just a glass panel that went half the length of the shower and then a door-sized open space through which all the cold air of the room could sneak in and shower with you. Perhaps marginally better than the hotels with shower curtains that billow into the shower while you’re washing your hair and play grabby-handsy with your upper thighs, but not by much.  

Rainfall shower head AND a half-panel of glass AND a barn door. The trifecta, achieved!

Other things I have noticed: Almost without exception, housekeeping services are on-demand now – if you stay multiple days and want your trash emptied or your linens changed, you need to call ahead (sometimes up to 24 hours in advance, according to in-elevator signage), whereas this was a daily service in previous years. (I never used to take people up on it – I don’t want housekeepers having to make my bed or tidy things up around my suitcases and toothbrush.) Shampoos and conditioners are TINY now, or that they come in big canisters that are permanently attached inside the showers. Probably an environmentally advantageous move, honestly. Shower caps, much to my enduring dismay, are no longer offered alongside your miniature shampoos and bars of soap.   

On the not-complaining-or-mocking side of things, the people at the hotels were ALL so nice to Carla. So nice. She loved to march up to the desk when we arrived and say, “We’re checking in” as much as she loved handing over the keys at the end of our stays and saying brightly, “We’re checking out.” The hotel staff invariably found her super charming. One receptionist asked me if he could give her a piece of candy and then allowed her to choose anything she wanted from the hotel snack pantry. Another person acted, with an entirely straight face, like Carla was the person who’d booked and paid for the room, and he asked her very seriously whether she’d enjoyed her stay, and then answered her multiple questions about the hotel (it was in an historic building) with such kindness that I was unable to bring myself to tell him that there had been NO LAMPS in the hotel room. I think it would be so easy, working in a hotel, to be bored or harried or both, but everyone (except for that one woman I mentioned above) was so kind. So kind. 

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Road Trip! Round Up

Okay, so now that I am feeling better, I am going to tell you about our Road Trip! It was truly a wonderful experience, except right there at the end. I do wish I could back in time and urge my family to WEAR MASKS even though we would be the only! people! doing so! but I cannot. 

We drove through so much beautiful landscape.

The best thing about the trip, by far, was spending so much time with my husband. He was so relaxed and cheerful and fun – all the things I love about him. All the things that the stress of his work chips away at on a normal basis. 

Madison, WI. Such a charming city. It’s very walkable with lots of cute restaurants and shops.

We had planned to take turns driving – we had six consecutive days of five- to seven-hour drives there, and five consecutive days of pretty-close-to-seven-hour drives on the way back. That’s a lot of driving for one person. And I DID drive. But my husband admitted that he spent the entire two hours I was in the driver’s seat staring at the speedometer, willing it to rise to the level HE is comfortable going. And we had multiple tense conversations where I expressed fear at passing someone and he would say that I should only pass when I was comfortable! and neither of us enjoyed that. So! From then on, he did nearly all of the remainder of the driving. 

Yes, we stopped to take a photo with the Jolly Green Giant in Blue Earth, MN

We used pretty much every single thing I told you I bought in this post, and a few of the things that I was considering at the time and ended up buying. PLUS we also bought a fidget snake that mbmom11 recommended. Used and LOVED, I should say. The only thing that went unopened was the game of Loaded Questions, which my husband put into his backpack and then wouldn’t allow us to remove. So none of us even knows if we would have liked it. 

Sioux Falls. Also very walkable, and the Falls were lovely.

The one thing that I wished we had but didn’t was a travel laundry bag. We kept stuffing our dirty clothes into random shopping bags or those dry-cleaning bags that hotels clip to the hangers in the closet, and the bags filled up more quickly than I would have thought and the handles kept breaking and it would have been very nice to have a dedicated bag for it. (I am really weird about NOT mixing dirty clothes with clean clothes, so I recognize this wouldn’t be at the top of everyone’s list.) We were able to wash laundry at my parents’ house, for which I am VERY grateful.

The Badlands National Park in South Dakota was spectacular, although we didn’t see any wild animals. We did see a lot of idiot tourists going off the well-maintained paths and climbing onto precarious perches to take photos for the ‘Gram, though.

Carla loved the road trip journal and the travel atlas. I’d say that she loved the atlas a little more than the journal – it seemed to have more easy breezy activities and fewer essay assignments. If I were a better planner, I would have allowed Carla to open the journal a day or so in advance of our trip, and talk it through with her. But oh well. 

The Dignity statue on the Crow Creek Reservation was breathtaking.

Even though we didn’t play Loaded Questions, we did try to find license plates from all 50 states. My husband made the rule early on that semi-trucks do NOT count, which made it really tough. (One of the last states we got was Maine, and SO MANY trucks seemed to be from Maine!) In the end, the only two states we didn’t get were Delaware and Hawaii.

Mount Rushmore and Crazy Horse were SO worth seeing.

We arrived at about 7:45 am, which meant NO crowds.

We DID get a cooler and we did USE the cooler, but only because we had it, not because we really needed it. In fact, for the first few days we didn’t use it at all and I kept asking my husband WHY we’d bought it. On the way home, though, we stopped at a little bakery and got some cute little cakes and put those in the cooler for two days before we had a chance to eat them, so it did come in handy in the end. 

Deadwood was fun to see. We spent about an hour there, and caught one of the free re-enactments they offer. It was exactly the right amount of time to spend there.

Speaking of food: I didn’t try to stick to the keto diet. Not even a little. (Note: It would have been fairly easy to do so if I had wanted to, I think. Most of the gas stations had Quest products and Whisps and little packages of meat-and-cheese and sometimes even Keto cookies. The reason I didn’t try was that I didn’t WANT to.) (Also, I weighed myself when I got home and I weighed EXACTLY THE SAME as I had when we left, which was highly disheartening.) I found that I often opted for the little veggie snacks when we stopped at gas stations – I ate carrots and ranch as well as a little tray of carrots, celery, and spinach dip with great gusto. But I also ate lots of chips. I unintentionally went on a Ruffles kick and tried several of their new (or new-to-me) flavors: Spicy Dill Pickle, Lime & Jalapeno, Flamin’ Hot BBQ. I don’t know that I LIKED any of them, but nary a chip crumb was left in any of the bags, so… I didn’t NOT like them. I drank a LOT of Diet Mountain Dew. One day, on a whim, I got a bottle of regular, full-sugar Squirt which was MUCH too sugary and only tasted of childhood for the first few sips. Yuck. I ate at my all-time favorite fast food place THREE times (I get a large potato oles with a side of nacho cheese, and I ask for a second little empty nacho-cheese cup to fill with hot sauce, and then I dip the oles into the hot sauce and then the nacho cheese. HEAVEN.) and ate fries from multiple McDonald’ses and Arby’ses. I would be okay if I never see a Subway Spicy Italian sandwich again. My husband found THREE Super Mega Candy Stores on our route, and he and my daughter had so much fun ogling all the candy and choosing what they wanted to buy. I forced Carla to eat some lettuce one night and tried to get tomatoes and fruit into her at least a few times, but mostly she subsisted on chicken nuggets and fries for two straight weeks. Her favorite gas station food stuff (besides morrrrrrrre candddyyyyyyy) was Babybel cheese. Oh! The Trader Joe’s popcorn I got before our trip was… not my favorite. No one really loved it, sadly. And I had bought a second bag in a fit of panic about not having enough if it turned out to be the best thing ever. Oh well. Fun to try.

Devil’s Tower in Wyoming was nothing short of a geological marvel. Stunning and bizarre and totally cool. The little walk around its perimeter was a great way to stretch our legs, too.

We also ate at a LOT of restaurants. More than we have eaten in over the past two-ish years combined, I think. Part of my husband’s in-depth planning for this trip involved researching fun places to eat, and it paid off. We went to a lot of breweries. I really grew accustomed to my nightly pint of local craft beer, to be honest. By the end of our trip, I was DESPERATE for something other than brewery food. I love burgers and fish and chips and salad with grilled salmon and whatever else you get at every brewery across the country, but I started craving enchiladas smothered in hot sauce or chicken vindaloo with a side of chana masala or red curry with shrimp or Brazilian braised pork with avocado crema. FLAVOR that is not Grilled or Fried. We went out for a LOT of breakfasts. I don’t LIKE breakfast, so I got tired of that in about the time it takes to scramble an egg. The last place we went to was not my kind of place – cramped, order at the counter, bus your own table. The silverware was in big canisters in the little cramped space between the tables and kitchen, and several of the forks I pulled out had crusted food baked into them. The mug they served my husband’s coffee in had multiple chips around the rim. My husband thought it was CHARMING and had CHARACTER but I hated it and I hated my artisan avocado toast and I was kind of a brat. But it was just the one bratty morning, and I think I pulled myself out of it okay, so I am going to give myself an overall rating of Good Breakfast Sport.

These were the ONLY wildlife we saw, and they weren’t even “wild,” because they were hanging out behind a fence with some longhorn cattle. Well, I did see a mountain goat on the side of the road, chewing some grass. But I didn’t get a photo and no one else saw it so it doesn’t really count. Oh, and we saw a ton of antelope, so many that the novelty wore off and they seemed as unexciting as cows.

We listened to two books on the drive. When Carla was watching her iPad or listening to her own collection of audiobooks (I think she was re-listening to Socks and to the Gooney Bird Greene series, both downloaded from our local library), my husband and I listened to There, There by Tommy Orange. It was, overall, a compelling and eye-opening read/listen. The audiobook was well done, with a multi-reader cast to help differentiate between the multiple narrators. But the subject matter was so very dark and sad. And there was SO MUCH cursing, which I don’t love but don’t normally mind too much – but it made me uncomfortable with Carla right there. Not that she doesn’t know most of the curse words. Not that a few overheard curse words can hurt her in any way. We FINISHED the entire book, which felt like quite an accomplishment. When Carla was taking an iPad break, we listened to the fifth Harry Potter. I wish we had listened to more of it; I don’t think we even made it halfway through. We listened to a lot less music than I thought we would. Mainly, I think, because we were so often in areas with no cell service, so our music choices were limited to a downloaded playlist on my husband’s phone. It’s a good playlist, but he’s heard it a million times, and honestly there’s only so much Drake I can deal with. Next time, I will suggest making a playlist in advance of the trip.

Ah, the prairie. Makes my heart sing, but I am only posting one photo of sagebrush and endless plains for your viewing pleasure. If you want more, I have MANY.

And there WILL be a next time. It went so well that we all agreed we want to do it again. We may not go on the road for two weeks straight again (just taking the time off is tricky for my husband), but we definitely are no longer fearful of lengthy, multi-day car trips. Maybe we’ll go to Canada, next time. 

Snow in Glacier, MT.

And lakes, also in Glacier! Montana has everything: plains, badlands, mountains, lakes, forests. Postcard views everywhere you turn.

The best days – even those that included the most time in the car – were those where we woke up early and were on the road between 7:00 and 8:00 am. That way, we could get to our day’s destination before dinner, even if we ended up stopping a couple of times along the way. I also found it most useful when we could walk around for a bit before or after dinner. Despite being in the car for up to seven hours a day, I still managed to get in 10,000+ steps most days. 

My favorite state to drive through was Wyoming. I’d only ever been to Jackson Hole before, and that was in the winter. Well, wait – I did go to Yellowstone some years ago; but I can’t remember if that was the Wyoming part or the Montana part. I think Montana. Anyway: the geology of Wyoming is stunning, and so changeable. We would be driving through plains, and then suddenly mountains would loom up around us. And then we were in a canyon surrounded by jagged rocks. And then rolling badlands. And then plains again. The Wind River Canyon was spectacular – everywhere a breathtaking view. Plus, the highways were fast and crowd-free.

We went to the Cody Nite Rodeo, which was a lot of fun.

None of our photos of Wind River Canyon do its staggering beauty justice. We kept pulling off the road to take photos, it was so gorgeous.

We went to a rodeo. We saw Mount Rushmore. We bathed in hot springs. We fished. We spent a LOT of quality time together. I got to see my best-friend-since-sixth-grade and my brother and my niece and BOTH sisters-in-law and my parents. 

We stopped in Des Moines for lunch. It was cute.

We covered nearly 4,900 miles. My poor car announced that it was due for maintenance somewhere along our journey home, and I understand exactly how it feels. But it was truly a wonderful, beautiful experience. 

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Souvenir

Well, we are back from our Road Trip!, which was fabulous. Ten days of driving that paused for a five-day stopover with my parents in the middle. My husband planned the trip in such a way that we didn’t get tired of being in the car until the very end. And then we arrived home, and it was wonderful to be back in our own beds, with a weekend to recover before getting back to normal.

And then I woke up with cold symptoms and rapid tests confirmed that I have Covid. The worst souvenir. 

So far, I am feeling crummy. But mainly CRANKY. 

Cranky at myself. I always anticipated getting Covid at some point; it’s long seemed inevitable. I thought that when I finally got it, I would feel resignation mixed with relief. But I don’t. I am MAD. I got Covid because I took unnecessary risks, and that’s just a fact. Did I expect that * I * was somehow invincible? That Covid would look at the fact that I’ve been pretty measured and cautious over the past two-ish years and say, “Let’s skip her”? That residents of the rural western United States are all roaming around unmasked because Covid doesn’t exist in those areas? Apparently I did expect those things because we relaxed our typical restrictions on our trip and I got Covid. We ate out in restaurants A LOT. We went into museums and gas stations and gift shops and sometimes we just left our masks in the car. We attended events with lots of other people and pretended that the outdoor venues would protect us. I was uncareful and I KNEW I wasn’t being careful and I got Covid. So I feel cranky and mad and a little ashamed and my head feels like a stress ball that’s being squeezed so intensely you can see the little beads inside it through the membrane. PLUS I somehow forgot to do the Wordle yesterday and it RESET my winning streak.

For posterity’s sake, my symptoms: It started with a scratchy throat. So lightly scratchy that it was easy enough to write it off as irritation from staying in so many hotels (I was getting irritated with being on the road, those last couple of days; why not my throat, too?), or the change in atmosphere/climate as we drove eastward toward home. Then a day of an even sorer throat, with an irresistible tickle that could only be soothed by chain-lozenging menthol cough drops. Then a day where the throat felt better and the cough was less persistent. Now, Day 4, I am in the Head in a Vise stage. I am isolating in my bedroom, which fortunately has its own bathroom, but I am resentful and grumpy and have to get up to staunch my runny nose every few minutes. 

Covid. Ugh.

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Monday Randomosity: Post-Trip Re-Entry Edition

We returned from our trip some time ago and man, is re-entry into normal life hard! Also, I have completely fallen out of the blogging habit and need to leap back in. Let’s try to jumpstart things with a little randomosity, yes?

• On the way to Europe, I was fine. Very little jet-lag that lasted maybe two days. On the way home? TWO WEEKS of waking up at 2:30 every morning, my body insistent that no, in fact, it was 8:30 and I was done sleeping. Didn’t matter if I’d gone to sleep at nine or midnight the night before, and believe me, I tried both. Didn’t matter if I took melatonin. Just wide awake at 2:30.
• And then I got a monster cold, from all the lack of sleep. Super fun.
• There were so many things to love about our trip, and I was prepared to return home and pine for the walkable cities and the suffusion of culture and the beautiful mountains. I was not prepared to pine for asparagus.

  
  We were in Vienna and Munich during spargel season (spargel being, of course, asparagus) and MAN was fresh Bavarian asapargus delicious. I wouldn’t say I’m a lover of asparagus; I like it fine, and will make it occasionally for dinner, and once in a while I’ll order it at a restaurant. Okay, once in a GREAT while. But during our trip, we had many many bowls of spargelsuppe and I even ate an entrée that was made up of asparagus spears dotted with hollandaise. AND THAT WAS ONE OF MY FAVORITE MEALS. For this nacho-loving lady, having drooly fantasies about a plate of white asparagus is very off-brand. Anyway, I have been bookmarking recipes for spargelsuppe and eyeing the asparagus in my grocery store. I haven’t bought any yet; it’s just a sad facsimile of the beautiful bounty of fresh white asparagus we saw at farmers’ markets throughout our trip.

• One thing I do NOT miss about our trip: the toilet paper. UGH. Even my cheapo Target brand toilet paper is like a angel’s kiss compared to the scratchy junk we used in Europe. Even the hotels had terrible toilet paper!!!
• Since we’re already talking about the bathroom situation, can I tell you about a misconception I had? So, in the cities we visited, there were no free public restrooms. You had to pee, you had to pay. I never had the proper change on me, so anytime I needed to avail myself of the facilities, we’d either hike back to our hotel (which happened once, and only because it was on the way) or stop in at a café for some tea and cake and a bathroom break. I am really enjoying my bathroom-related rhyming in this paragraph. But one morning in Vienna, neither of those options was available, and I had to use a pay toilet in the middle of a market. I was dreading it. DREADING. I waited until the last possible second because I had visions of American rest-stop bathrooms in my head. Well! My half Euro got me into a PRISTINE restroom, with stalls that had been freshly cleaned, each with its own sink. It was a little weird that the attendant to the ladies’ room was a man, but once I got past that, it was a delightful experience. Well, as delightful as a public pee can get, you understand.
  

  Here is a picture from one of the stands in the market; I did not photograph the restroom. I’m sorry slash you’re welcome.

• I came to the conclusion on our trip that mankind has not yet invented a truly comfortable shoe. Either that or my feet and ANY shoes are the Princess and the Pea of extremities. Sure, we were walking a lot (ten miles a day), but my husband was wearing his years-old loafers and he had ZERO problems. I had to rotate between my new-for-this-trip Sketchers and an old pair of Børn riding boots that I packed at the last minute because the weather was supposed to be so cold and rainy (it was, which didn’t dampen our fun in the least, see what I did there). Even switching between them, my feet were in constant agony. Oh well. I think I kept the whining to a minimum; at least, my husband didn’t murder me for foot-complaint-related-reasons, so I’ll call that a success. And I only got one lonesome blister, from my dressy shoes, which I have had with no issue for years and wore ONE evening only and yet they still ripped open the skin beneath my pinky toe.
• Shout out to Rick Steves — whom my husband and I affectionately refer to as “Ricky” — whose guides are super helpful and always include easy-to-follow city walks. My husband toted his Fancy Camera all around Bavaria and his camera bag had a pocket just big enough to stow our Ricky selection of the day — Rick Steves Vienna, Salzburg, & Tirol while we were in those places and Rick Steves Germany 2019 when we were in Munich and Nuremberg. While Ricky and I don’t necessarily have the same taste in food, I am very fond of him and his dad-style humor.

  

• There is a very charming café culture in Vienna. Lots of cafes where you sit and have coffee/tea and cake. We ate a lot of cake. I miss the cake.
  

  

  

  
• I also miss the beer. Beer and wine were plentiful and inexpensive AND delicious. Of course, the beer I loved the most does not seem to be exported to the U.S., but I guess that preserves its awesomeness a little more.
  

  

  
• And the castles. I miss those too.
  

  Hohenschwangau Castle, southwest of Munich

  

  Fortress Hohensalzburg, which looms over Salzburg in a very intimidating fashion and can be reached by hiking or funicular. 

  

  Neuschwanstein Castle, a stone’s throw away from Hohenschwangau. By the way, this photo was taken from a teeny rickety bridge spanning a crevasse between two craggy mountains. Was I certain the bridge would collapse at any moment? YES. Did it? No, I suppose not. 

• Well, it was a great trip. Our plane didn’t crash (although the turbulence we experienced on the way to Europe was so severe I didn’t sleep AT ALL) and neither of us suffered any illness or injury. Okay, so I did fall down the stairs of our hotel in Munich, but it was the day before we left, so it didn’t put too much of a damper on things. And I didn’t break any bones, just got an enormous bruise, which, to be honest, is a fairly frequent occurrence anyway. I have skin like a peach.
• And now we are home, and reintegrated into our lives, and trying to inject little snippets of our European fun into our everyday: we took Carla downtown last weekend and walked around the city (not the same as walking around Vienna or Munich or Salzburg) and meandered through the market hall (SO not the same as the charming markets in Bavaria) and bought some Bavarian beer. I am bemoaning the lack of easily accessible public transportation and charming (if renovated post-war) streets.
  

  Streetcar in Vienna – my favorite mode of transportation

  

  Adorable street in Nuremberg, which we knew to photograph thanks to the inimitable Rick Steves

• Now that I am FINALLY sleeping again, I feel like I am getting back in the swing of things: coming up with meals to serve my family, thinking through Carla’s birthday party plans, tidying the house for my in-laws who will be visiting soon… Glad to have traveled, glad to be home.

 

What have you been up to, Internet?

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Tuesday Randomosity: Pre-Trip Panic and Additional Fretful Absurdities Edition

I am skipping today’s Dinners This Week post. I mean, there’s no need to plan dinners when you’ll be eating dinner on an airplane, right? Let’s have some randomosity. Join me, won’t you?

First, let’s have some medicinal nachos:

Chips. Top with cheese. Melt for 30 seconds in the microwave. Top with black beans and frozen corn. Microwave for another 20 seconds. Top with copious amounts of my favorite hot sauce. Add avocado, diced onion, and sour cream. Cilantro if you have it/don’t hate it. Tomatoes if you swing that way. Squeeze a wedge of lime over everything. Add copious amounts of sriracha for good measure. DEVOUR.

• A lot of my fretting about Leaving My Bayyyyyybeeeeee has been channeled into Shoe Panic. As in, how am I going to walk around Europe for ten days without reducing my delicate feet to bloody shreds? So I have purchased and returned approximately 90,000 pairs of shoes in the past week. Nothing like leaving an important aspect of your planning to the very last minute!

 

• These are the shoes I have ended up with: Skechers Go Walk Evolution Ultra sneakers (why do all athletic shoes have such ridiculous names?) and Vionic Minna ballet flats (in color “sand”) because I wanted to have walk-friendly shoes that were dressy enough for a nice-ish dinner.

 

• Building on some of your great ideas for making the trip easier on Carla, I have bought her some books and other little fun surprises to open while we’re gone. There is a real dearth of fun, story-based children’s books about the very specific locations we are traveling to, which is DISAPPOINTING, but I did find this book about one of the cities on our itinerary:

• You know that one of my big panics is Death By Airplane, right? So I have been desperately trying to get our life insurance upgraded just in case. Of course, the process takes waaaaayyyyy longer than I thought it would, so we just squeaked our medical exams in at the last minute and there is no way the underwriting will be complete before we leave. (I use these terms like I have any idea whatsoever how any of this works, which I do NOT.) HOWEVER. Did you know that you can get provisional coverage, based on the assumption that you will get approved? So that’s what we’re doing. We can pay a premium as though we’ve been approved, and then, when we come back home, ALIVE, we can pay any additional amount as needed. And if we perish while overseas, we’re covered. (I mean, as long as we are approved and have paid the correct amount; I’m assuming my parents could pay any difference after the fact.) Cool, right!?! Okay, maybe my calibration of “cool” has shifted in odd ways.

 

• In other morbid planning, I tried to record myself singing to Carla. There are two songs I have been singing to her at bedtime all her life – one I made up while pregnant with her and the other is “Moon River” – and I have this desperate feeling that I MUST record myself singing them so she can listen to the songs (but will she?) to comfort her (but will they?) after my fiery death. But I can’t record myself! It’s so ridiculous! In every recording, I keep SWALLOWING in the middle of sentences. Like, “Mooooooon river, wider than a mile, I’m crossing [gulp] you in style someday…. [gulp] Dream maker, you heart [gulp] breaker….” It’s really distracting and annoying and I cannot NOT do it. I mean, have you ever tried to NOT SWALLOW when your body is telling you to swallow? And then try to SING while not swallowing? It’s absurd and obviously some sort of weird self-conscious reaction to recording myself. Do not suggest that I ask my husband to record me actually singing to Carla, because then I would die of embarrassment and also we are out of time. I am going to choose the least gulpy of the options and THAT’S JUST HOW CARLA WILL HAVE TO REMEMBER ME.

 

• Abrupt subject change: Our Amazon Echo (Alexa) has begun telling me to enjoy my day. “Have a nice day,” she’ll say after I ask for the weather in the morning. “Have a good afternoon,” she’ll say sometimes after I’ve asked for the news briefing. It’s creepy but nice? And she only says it to me. She has never once used any sort of pleasantry with my husband. Also creepy? But it makes me feel vindicated in using “please” and “thank you” when making requests of her. My husband may not be on the good side of the AI after the uprising, but hopefully Alexa will put in a good word for me.

 

• While I’m worrying about wholly unimportant things (recap: dying on my totally voluntary trip overseas; the state of my footwear for said trip; singing lullabies without swallowing; the inevitable AI uprising; will I have enough nachos to last until we leave for Europe?), let’s add in some panic about Carla’s birthday party. I think we have the venue down. And Carla has shifted from Tiger Theme to Seahorse Theme to Mommy, You Choose A Theme From These Five Cat-Related Categories Plus Foxes. So I am leaning toward Rainbow Leopard Theme, mainly because I have found the perfect party favor:

• And the perfect cake to torture myself with making. (My husband heaved a great world-weary sigh when I told him about it and asked if I might consider just BUYING a cake.) (No.) (Does he know me?)

 

• But I can’t find any great theme-appropriate invitations; some decent ones, but nothing I LOVE. And, WORSE, because I will panic about LITERALLY ANYTHING meaningless in the grand scheme of things, I cannot find any theme-appropriate paper plates and napkins. I can order them via Zazzle for around $60 for 40 to 50 plates-or-napkins, but can we all agree that spending $60 on 40 paper plates for a single party is excessive? I’m not saying it can’t be DONE; I wouldn’t judge anyone for spending $60 on 40 plates if that’s how they chose to spend their hard-earned money. But I think $1.70 cheetah-print paper plate — PAPER, not even hard plastic — is excessive and I really want to avoid it if at all possible.

 

• So maybe foxes? I haven’t looked it up, but foxes could be a good alternative, right? It’s just that they are so Off Brand for my particular child, who wears leopard print probably three days a week (today she is wearing a faux fur cheetah print vest over a green dress and black leggings with faux leather patches; she has a very particular sense of style, this kid) and has leopard print boots and pretends to be a rotating cast of leopards/cheetahs/panthers on a daily basis. I am already exhausted by planning this party and I haven’t really even begun.

 

• Please keep in mind that I KNOW that none of this is important, it’s a birthday party, not the Oscars or some other party that actually matters/has wide visibility, and really ALL parties pale in comparison to, like, climate change and gun control and matters of REAL IMPORT. I am not overlooking the absolute absurdity of wasting brainpower on this frivolity.

 

• Frivolity continues: And what are we going to get Carla for her actual gift? She is fresh out of ideas, unless you count “more Barbies!” as an idea which I do not. The only things I can come up with are a) a new bike (although she has a perfectly good hand-me-down bike that will probably last her at least another year, in terms of being the right height, not to mention she staunchly refuses to let us remove the training wheels) and b) a doll, because she seems to finally be more interested in dolls than in stuffed animals. She has repeatedly asked for a basket for her bike, so she can collect things (acorns, pinecones, rocks) when she goes for bike rides… but I don’t think “needs a basket” is enough of a reason to buy a whole new bike… I don’t know. I am on the fence. What is the six-year-old set into these days?

 

• I LOVED dolls as a child, and my mom got me a couple of Corelle (?) dolls that I cherished and played with for many years. (Oh wait, it turns out they are COROLLE dolls – Corelle is a type of dishware, it seems. My bad.) Is Corolle still a good way to go, doll-wise? American Girl dolls seem to be popular around here… although they are SO expensive I don’t think I am ready to travel down that road. I also used to love Cabbage Patch Dolls, are those still A Thing? (Ugh, I am cringing thinking about how the “preemie” Cabbage Patch Dolls were so coveted when I was a little girl. I guess March of Dimes used them to raise awareness about premature birth, but that went right over my head at the time. I can imagine it being a hurtful thing for lots of parents.) What is the current Doll Trend, is what I want to know? I thought, being a parent, this knowledge would sort of magically manifest in my brain but I WAS WRONG.

 

• Speaking of brains: does your brain do that thing where, when overtired, it fixates on one word or phrase or song lyric to the exclusion of all other thoughts? Mine has been choosing “It’s raining tacos,” itself an agonizingly repetitive song, to replay ad nauseum in my head, at 2:30 am and beyond. Fun.  (No.)

 

• My Inevitable Death Panic (which is both panic about my inevitable death and an inevitable panic about death) is manifesting in lots of cleaning, which is good, I suppose. But I have failed to take any Before photos, which makes it poor blog fodder. I just want you to know that I have done a LOT of work and gotten rid of a LOT of crap. I am kind of hoping my mom will open some drawers and marvel at how spare and tidy they are. “Maybe she died in a plane crash taking a totally unnecessary trip abroad, but, man, are her drawers neat and clean!” they’ll say at my funeral.

 

• Let’s have one more photograph of medicinal nachos. These were yesterday’s, so I need to see if I have enough ingredients for another heaping dose before I make my way to The Land of Sausages and Schnitzel. DOCTOR’S ORDERS.

Okay. Enough. What’s up with you, Internet? Lord knows we have enough Big Serious Issues at hand to ensure we never sleep again. But what utterly frivolous things are keeping you up at night?

By the way, my husband and I decided to limit ourselves to one phone while overseas, and it is his phone, so blog posting/reading is likely to be light/nonexistent while we’re gone. I promise photos of castles if when we return.

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Live from the Middle of the Night!

It is bad enough that I am a very light sleeper. So light that the sound of my niece turning on the lightswitch in the bathroom down the hall jolts me into heart-pounding alertness.

What’s worse is that I cannot fall back to sleep. I am now awake, even though it is not yet four in the morning and even though I only went to bed three hours ago and even though the house is completely dark and no one else – not even my niece – is awake.

Instead, my brain is bouncing around from toe to toe like a boxer psyching herself up for a fight, except that the boxer has just downed an entire crate of 5-hour energy and her opponent is my desire to sleep.

Let’s worry, for awhile, about our security system. Early yesterday, we got a call from our security company to let us know that the power was out in our area. Great, thanks, security company. Allow my blood pressure to drop from Our House Is Being Invaded levels for a moment here. But then, of course, came the worry that our power was out, and we are… not there. My husband looked up the outage and discovered it should be resolved in a couple of hours; sure enough, it was. But then today, we got ANOTHER call from the security company to let us know that the outage had NOT been resolved and our backup battery was running low and we needed to DO SOMETHING. We could not do anything because we aren’t close with our neighbors and our local friends are all also on spring break. So I told them this, fervently hoped that a burglar would not choose this exact moment to break into our house, and said goodbye. But now, at not-quite-four-a.m., I am worrying and worrying and worrying. Maybe the person who said they were from our security company was not, in fact, from our security company… but was trying to scam me? And, yes, their plan was quite elaborate, mirroring the security company’s phone number and all and having two separate people call me, but STILL. It could be a very elaborate burglar. And, even if there is no scammer, what about our poor house, standing empty and unprotected (you know, except by locks and good, observant neighbors)? And what if the power company is WRONG, and our house doesn’t currently have power and our pipes are freezing and our food is all rotting? Of course there is absolutely NOTHING I can do about it, but let’s go over all the nothing options one by one since there is no one awake to entertain me, shall we?

After I finally decide to call the police station tomorrow and ask if they will increase patrols around our neighborhood for the next few days, my mind turns to the much more productive topic of Embarrassing Things I Did and Said During High School.

I turn on my phone and scroll through my news feed.

I turn off my phone and recite poems in my head.

I push my husband because he is snoring.

I go to the bathroom.

I listen very carefully to see if the noise Carla made (she is sleeping on a mat at the foot of our bed) is going to turn into crying; it does not.

I pick up my phone and start scrolling through a favorite blogger’s archives, because they are lovely and soothing, but it turns out I have overused this particular comfort technique because I can’t find any posts I haven’t recently read.

I find a nice long article about the mysterious disappearance of the world’s most famous actress.

Ah, finally. I am starting to drift off to sleep. I close my eyes and… UPPERCUT. My brain pinches me, hard. OMG, I almost fell asleep! Not on my brain’s watch! No way, no how!

Now I am nice and alert to focus on the important work of worrying about an upcoming trip and how hard/awful it will be to leave Carla behind.

Why didn’t I work harder on memorizing more poems???

Oh good. Here are partial lyrics from the Descendants 2 soundtrack to loop through my head instead.

I know! I can fret about the upcoming dinner party! Maybe I should scrap the Tex-Mex theme entirely and go for chicken and salad.

Go to the bathroom.

My husband is doing that thing where he is lying on his back and he has his head resting on his forehead with his elbow up in the air, but it keeps falling over and he keeps jerking it back into position. I push him onto his side.

Is Carla having a nightmare? Is she whimpering?

Are there burglars tiptoeing through my defenseless home right at this very moment?

Dumb Buzzfeed quiz.

Slow slide into sleep… PUNCH TO THE SOLAR PLEXUS. Almost made it there, but my brain swooped in to intervene just in the nick of time!

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

This goes on until seven thirty when my niece wakes up and starts talking with her mom, at which point Carla wakes up, delighted to get to play with her cousin, and I whine to my husband about my sleepless night. Kind man that he is, he takes Carla out into the kitchen and closes the door behind him. But… two minutes later, Carla crashes through the door to get a stuffed animal, and then two minutes after that my husband comes in to get some medicine and I snarl at him to just let me have HALF AN HOUR OF SLEEP FTLOG and lie there fuming at the rapidly-lightening ceiling. And then thirty minutes of no sleep later I angrily get up and start the day.

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Thinking About – Don’t Get Your Hopes Up – Baby Spacing

The only ship on that entire vast sea is barely a white fleck on the horizon.

Well, after all that gift discussion (after which I begrudgingly admit that even though my husband has The Exact Opposite Feelings on the topic to me, he is not the only one and maybe I should give him a break), my family visited my in-laws for spring break and I brought lots of wearable gifts my mother-in-law has bought us over the years, and she noticed and commented on ALL of it, in an affirming I’m-so-happy-you-actually-wear-that! sort of way. And I was glad.

We had SUCH a nice time over spring break, and I think the nicest part of all was that Carla was SO EASY.

She is a happy, affectionate, inquisitive child who tends toward the super-high-energy end of the energetic spectrum. Which, in the hands of her introvert, prefers-to-lie-on-the-couch-quietly-and-read-a-book-by-herself mother, can translate into exhausting. We have kept past vacations to an X-day limit because she gets bored and then the energy cranks up to 7,000 and she begins bouncing off the walls and furniture. But this year, mainly because of an incompatibility between airline ticket prices and reasonable flight times (I am NOT boarding a plane for home with my gets-more-energized-the-more-tired-she-gets toddler at eight p.m. thank you very much), we ended up staying a full week. And it was GREAT. Everything was great.

Carla was a peach of a traveler, both ways. She happily walked around the airport (with us, obviously) before our flight, looking at all the glorious toys in the many gift shops and newsstands, asking us to add a variety of items to her birthday list. She was excited about everything: the airplanes lined up outside the airport, going through security, people traveling with dogs, wearing her little penguin backpack, getting on the plane, having her own seat, plane snacks, seeing the clouds, seeing the ocean from the windows, watching Sofia appisodes over and over (she has an Amazon Fire tablet for kids that keeps her busy and happy for hours), landing, waving at friendly strangers, running full-steam to hug her grandmother when we left the concourse.

While we were in Florida, she was GREAT. She ate well, she was happy and charming. She was enthusiastic about every one of the seven million projects her grandmother had set up for her. She was happy vegging in front of the TV whenever the grown ups needed a minute. She loved the pool, the beach, the boat we took to a little island, the ocean, shells, lizards, local dogs, collecting rocks, watering the plants, pretending to drive her grandfather’s car, going to restaurants, eating ice cream. All of it. She went to bed late pretty much every night we were there, and napped maybe twice, and yet she was good natured and happy to play by herself or happy to play with a grown up, just happy in general.

Great. She was great.

So of course all of this has me thinking – maybe more concretely than usual – about babies, and how great they are, and how yes they are challenging sometimes but look! it all turns out so GREAT!

Listen: DON’T GET YOUR HOPES UP. I’m just musing here. I’m just thinking idly, happily, about a topic (babies) that interests me to no end. It doesn’t mean anything.

My husband and I are 95% certain that Carla is IT. There are many many wonderful, valid, reasonable reasons to have more than one child; there are – despite those who may disagree – an equal number of wonderful, valid, reasonable reasons to have just the one. (Or none! If that’s your choice!) So we are very comfortable with that near-decision.

But it is a near-decision, not a final one. We haven’t taken any measures. We haven’t donated the large pile of baby stuff in our basement. We haven’t stopped talking about it.

It’s just that the conversations always turn to, We love having just Carla. We feel complete. We feel happy.

But…

I still think about Another Baby, every day. Carla was such a great baby, and watching her grow and learn and develop her personality has been such a complete wondrous delight; part of me feels so sad that I won’t get to experience that with another baby.

Following nearly two weeks of Carla At Her Best, it’s easy to imagine that another baby might be doable. I’m not saying I WANT another baby. I’m just saying that, before, I couldn’t picture at ALL how a tiny, needy infant would work into our family. Because Carla is a hands-on, all-hands-on-deck kid. Now, I have this glimpse of what a more mature Carla might be like: (slightly) more serene, more independent, more able to channel that immense energy into activities that don’t put her in immediate danger and leave me whirling.

Anyway, it has me thinking, five years wouldn’t be such a bad distance between two siblings.

Let us forget the fact that we were on vacation and so we were removed from our normal pattern of life… and that we were much more relaxed and less time pressured than on a normal day… and that Carla had not her normal one-most-of-the-time, sometimes-two adults but four to attend to her every whim… and that prior to spring break, I had a week-long stomach bug, which was horrendous, and Carla was just off, complaining of a tummy ache and not eating anything much at all, so by comparison OF COURSE everything is easier… and FOUR ADULTS. Let’s not take ANY of those factors into consideration when we look at how easy it has become to parent my nearly-four-year-old. Instead, let us jump headlong into LET’S THINK ABOUT MORE BABIES.

Clearly, I have become infected with some sort of tropical brain-altering disease. So let’s turn this discussion away from ME (and, as much as it may hurt to clamp your hand over your mouth, away from Why We Need Another Baby) and toward YOU and the infinitely interesting topic of baby spacing.

What, for you, is the ideal spacing between siblings? Has your opinion changed – perhaps after you experienced the spacing in real time? What is your own experience with any siblings you have – are you a good distance apart? What are the plusses and minuses?

My brother and I are six years apart. That’s a big gap in many ways; when I went off to college he was still in middle school. Six years represents a huge difference in interests and pursuits and abilities. I wouldn’t say we’ve ever been close, although we certainly love (and like) each other. As adults, we don’t talk particularly often, but we have a good time when we’re together. For (possibly false) reference, I read or heard somewhere that a six-year age difference is like having two only children, which has plusses and minuses.

A former colleague of mine has two boys five years apart. She maintains that five years is the PERFECT distance. The older child is old enough to be helpful and self-entertaining when the baby is born. You’re far enough out of the nursing/no-sleeping infant stage that it doesn’t seem as daunting anymore. The older child is in school part of the day. There won’t be two children in college at the same time. Other reasons that I didn’t pay close enough attention to at the time, because I was DONE. Am done.

Someone my husband works with said that four years is the perfect distance. That happens to be the same spacing between my husband and his sister, who have a slightly-closer-but-not-by-much relationship than I do with my brother. I don’t particularly want to ask their mother what the plusses and minuses of that spacing are(, considering her opinion is that we are HARMING Carla by not giving her a sibling; if that is your opinion as well, I kindly ask that you refrain from sharing it here). I would guess that many of the same reasons as the five-year spacing apply.

In any event, the four-year-spacing ship has sailed for us.

A woman from my long-defunct book club had three boys, one right after another. I’m sure they weren’t exactly a year apart, but it seemed that way. And she swore by that method: you get the baby stage over with all at once. It’s not super while you’re in it, but then it’s OVER. The same goes for all the rest of life’s experiences, I suppose. And all your kids are close-knit, or at least have a good chance of it.

Most of my friends are in the eighteen-months-apart to three-years-apart club. Again, for me, all that’s left of that particular ship is a tired crest of wake finally breaking against the shore.

I think, for my particular personality, and my own brand of I Am Not Cut Out to Be a Mother at All, Let Alone to Two Children, a bigger space would be better. This may be obvious, considering that I have a nearly-four-year-old and am just now getting around to moving the dial from 95% sure we are done to 93% sure. But the idea of breathing space between the stages seems attractive. (Ignoring, of course, that all kids are in stages all the time, so there would really be NO breathing room.) It’s really too bad I didn’t start much younger; an eighteen-year-old and a newborn has its appeal.

See? I must have some sort of Only In Florida parasite munching away at the reasoning centers of my brain.

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When Something Is Deeply Important to One Spouse and Not the Other

What I want to talk about today is having something in your life that is deeply meaningful to one spouse but not the other.

I think this could take various forms. Let’s say you are very religious, and your spouse is not. I imagine that not having the same level of interest in religion could present some difficulties.  You might be thinking, well, that seems like something you should have talked about before you got married. But maybe there wasn’t such a vast distance between you at first; maybe you were a moderately religious person, and accepted that your spouse was an atheist… and only over time did your religion grow in importance to you, while your spouse remained an atheist. While people DO make this work in their marriages, I see how it could be potentially very difficult.

Or maybe when you were first married, you were both politically moderate. But over time, one of you has begun to edge into more conservative territory while the other has become more and more liberal. I cannot continue with this as an example because it’s stressing me out.

So: what about something that sounds less like it might cause a marital crisis?

What if you are really passionate about CrossFit, but your spouse just can’t get too excited about it? Maybe you can get your spouse to do a Paleo cleanse every now and again, but your spouse has no interest in exercising and really doesn’t want to wake up early to go to your CrossFit events and would rather watch Game of Thrones than the CrossFit Games. Even if you have friends who are also in CrossFit, I could see how it could be frustrating if your spouse did not share your interest.

Or what if your dream is to visit all the major league ballparks in America? But your spouse has zero interest in baseball. Your spouse might indulge you by planning vacations in cities  that have major league teams. But maybe your spouse has no interest in touring yet another ballpark, or going to yet another endless baseball game in the full glare of the sun. I can see how it would be lonely to attend a game by yourself, or frustrating to be pushed to do other tourist activities when all you want to do is walk among the bleachers of some historic field, imagining the crack of the ball against the bat, and the roar of the crowd.

I think we can all agree that spouses can and may – and even should – have different interests. And maybe we can agree that it’s important for spouses to respect one another’s interests, even if they don’t understand them or like them. We might also be able to go one step further and say that it would be in the interests of the marriage to at least try to support the other spouse’s interest. And, on the other side of things, for the spouse-with-the-interest to be respectful and understanding of the disinterest on the spouse’s side, and not to press to hard or get too bent out of shape.

My example of this is kind of frivolous, and really only becomes an issue about once a year. But I spend a lot of energy fretting about it and wishing VERY HARD that I could force my husband into not just respecting my interest but into LOVING it as much as I do.

My parents live in the middle of a picturesque forest in a wide valley between two mountain ranges. It is indescribably beautiful, so I will post a photo of it to give you the mere glimmer of an idea.

I didn’t grow up there, in the mountains. But my dad spent summers there as a boy, and so we visited the area every summer. At one point, my parents bought a swath of land and built a little one bed/one bath log cabin powered by a generator, and my whole family would go there for weekends or weeks throughout the summer. There’s a little lake nearby, and my parents have a boat, and we’d water ski or tool around the lake or lie on the dock in the sun. We did lots of hiking, even though hiking isn’t really my jam, we played Scrabble in the evenings, and we spent many, many hours reading in the clear mountain air, with only the sounds of sandhill cranes, the thrum of hummingbirds and industrious bees, and the distant whir of a motor boat to disrupt the pure calm.

But this idyllic beauty comes at a price: My parents’ home is difficult to get to – most of a day of travel from my home. And it’s isolated – there aren’t any bars or movie theaters or malls or really many restaurants you can get to without a long drive.

To me – and to my parents, who live there – these are pros rather than cons.

For my husband, who was born in a city and has lived in a city of one size or another his whole life – at least I think that’s the defining difference between us, here – they seem to be more con than pro.

He goes, without hesitation or complaint. We book our flights each year, and he talks about looking forward to taking a break, and about how nice it will be to see my parents. But I don’t think the idea of being completely off-grid is as appealing to him as it is to me. No cell towers anywhere nearby. No cable television. Nowhere to drive if you get bored (!) by the beautiful scenery, unless you want to spend an hour or more in the car. (We do, now, have electricity; my parents eventually built a two-bed/three-bath home with all the amenities.)

To me, having grown up with this space in my life, it has become synonymous with peace and relaxation. So I just don’t get why my husband doesn’t love it the way I do. I want desperately for him to love it. Not just tolerate it. But to LOVE it, to feel the pull of the tamaracks and Ponderosa pine, to long for the brush of ice-kissed mountain breezes on his face, to ache for the enormous wide-open skies and gleaming silence.

It has recently occurred to me that maybe I am being unreasonable.

If I were to be a passionate marathon runner, I can envision wanting my husband to be supportive of my efforts to get into shape and eat a healthy diet. I can envision wanting my husband to make every effort to attend the actual marathons, to cheer me on and to be there at the finish line. I can even envision myself wanting him to share with me the exhilaration of pushing my body to its limits, and the euphoria of accomplishing such a physically and mentally punishing goal. But I cannot envision asking him to get up at 4:00 each morning and run 10 miles if he doesn’t want to.

I am a writer. Some of what I write is poetry. My husband is supportive of my writing, even proud. He has been to readings with me. He tolerates it when I read him poems from the New Yorker. He has bought me books of poems he thinks I would like. But he does not love poetry, or even like it. I cannot envision asking him to read books of poems just because I love it.

These things seem like reasonable deviations in our interests. So why am I so fixed on trying to get him to love visiting the mountains?

I have gone through stages. The wheedling stage: just try it, please please for me, and maybe you’ll like it! The petulant indifference stage: well, I’m going to have a good time whether you do or not. The placating stage: let’s do exactly what YOU want to do, and maybe you’ll enjoy it more! The frustration stage: there must be something wrong with you; what’s not to like?!?! The despair stage: how can I spend the next fifty years trying to get you to love something you just don’t love? The melodramatic stage: does this incompatibility mean we are destined for divorce?

Maybe the next stage is acceptance. Maybe I have to finally realize that my parents’ magical forest hideaway is just not my husband’s kind of thing. Maybe I will have to get to a point where Carla and I go visit my parents by ourselves, and don’t pressure my husband into making the trek. (Although I don’t necessarily think he’d like THAT; he doesn’t like to be away from me and Carla, for one thing, and he also wants to see my parents.) Maybe I just have to let him support my interest by coming with me, even though it’s not his idea of The Best Time Ever, and allow him to feel slightly bored and slightly uncomfortable. Maybe, over time, he will come to enjoy it more, and maybe I just have to stop pressuring him. Or maybe not. Maybe it just shouldn’t matter. After all, he may not LOVE it, but he Shows Up, and that should count for more than I’ve been counting it. And I guess I have to respect and support that as much as he respects and supports my need to have this kind of retreat in my life.

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Friday Randomosity: This Post Is Long and Has Some Pictures Including One of a Bug So Consider Yourself Warned Edition

So I was on vacation. It was wonderful but now I am tired. Here, have an alligator:

A small gator is still a gator.

I really miss blogging. As in, writing blog posts. And reading OTHER PEOPLE’S blog posts. Especially yours.

Anyway. Randomosity is a good re-entry into posting. For me, at least. For you, probably not so much. But I GAVE YOU AN ALLIGATOR so get off my back already.

* During my vacation, I somehow fell into a wormhole of books about Russia. It started with Child 44 which I got from my husband for my birthday. It was soooo dark and horrible and fascinating that I had to IMMEDIATELY, while I was in Florida at my in-laws’ house, Amazon Prime myself the next book in the series. (The Secret Speech.) And I really really REALLY wish I had also ordered Agent 6, which is the THIRD book in the series. But instead I also Amazon Primed myself the second in ANOTHER mystery/crime/thriller series (the Sweden-based Henning Mankell series starring Kurt Wallander) called The Dogs of Riga which, well, it didn’t have do with RUSSIA but it did have to do with LATVIA and continued the theme of Stalinist-era culture. And THEN I read Snowdrops, which was about modern-day Russia and the lasting effects of the Stalinist era.

Of the four, Child 44  was the best. Closely followed by The Secret Speech and then Snowdrops. I was disappointed in The Dogs of Riga. Namely because the author/translator felt the need to keep talking about how “the dogs” (in Riga, obvs) were after the main character and other characters, as though to really drive home the fact that the title was chosen for a Serious Reason.  Seriously. Every chapter after Wallander got to Riga mentioned the dogs. Sometimes there were dog mentions multiple times per page.  I GET IT. These are the Dogs of Riga. STOP BASHING ME OVER THE HEAD WITH IT.

(The dogs are not actual canines, you know. They are the villains in the book.)

* Is it clear that I spent large portions of my vacation reading?

But I have a problem, Internet. When I want to read a book, I want to read it NOW. I was about 100 pages from being done with Child 44 when I noticed that it was nearly over (WOE!) and I’d be out of fascinating Stalinist-era reading before I knew it. So my husband and I went to Barnes & Noble.

Listen, I could write 10 bazillion words about the GLARING differences between my husband and me when it comes to books and book buying and book choosing and book reading. But I will spare you all that and just say: he is a price comparison kind of guy where I am an “if I want it and the price isn’t unreasonable, I will buy it” kind of gal. I guess this isn’t specific to books. But what I’m saying is, I wanted to buy The Secret Speech. At Barnes & Noble. Which is why we went there.

But my husband – who knew all this, and still drove me to Barnes & Noble for the PURPOSE of buying The Secret Speech – did not allow me to buy The Secret Speech at Barnes & Noble. (Note: I don’t mean “did not allow” as in he FORBADE me to do things. He’s not so much into forbidding me to do stuff.  I mean it as, he advocated against buying it there and, partly in the name of marital harmony, but mostly in the name of I hadn’t yet finished Child 44, I went along with his plan instead of just buying the damn book. At the Barnes & Noble. In which we were standing. BECAUSE WE’D GONE THERE TO BUY THE BOOK IN QUESTION.) Instead, he pointed out that we could order it much more cheaply online, and with Amazon Prime, not only would we get free shipping, we’d also get the book in two days.

Fine. I get it. Saving a buck blah blah blah. BUT WHY DID WE HAVE TO GO TO BARNES & NOBLE THEN?

* We went to the beach one night to see the sun set over the ocean. I unwisely decided I needed to dip my toes in the ocean while my husband took photos with his camera (mostly amazing) and I took photos with my camera (mostly blurry) of the beautiful clouds rolling in.

It rained, so we sat in the car for most of the pre-sunset time. (I mainly spent that time trying vainly to brush sand off my feet so I wouldn’t get sand in my father-in-law’s car. I failed. Which is why I am very thankful for dustbusters.)

Anyway, it was raining and I had my camera all dressed up with nowhere to go, so I took a photo of the raindrops on the car window with the macro setting of my camera. See?

Ooh. Aaaah.

And another raindrop photo – this one with a palm tree in the background:

The rain did let up right in time for the sun to slip into the ocean in a wonderful photo-op-tastic way.

* What’s the opposite of the beach at sunset? Snow and fog in the mountains!

* That Zooey Deschanel show on Fox, The New Girl? I find it quite charming. But the theme song will NOT get out of my head.

And it’s not the whole theme song, either. It’s just the beginning. The “Hey, girl… Whatcha doin’?” part. Over and over and over. It is making me want to punch things.

Also, whenever I watch that show I feel an uncontrollable urge to get bangs.

* Have I blathered on sufficiently long enough to talk about the bug now? We have had a few of these bugs in our house:

OMG IT IS SO GROSS. (Picture not to scale, dear god no.)

Do you know what kind of bug that is? It’s horrifying, obviously. But, like, its name? Or how to make sure I never see another one ever again?

* Speaking of bugs, a giant, pudgy brown flying thing just helicoptered past my window. Outside, at least. But dude: What the eff is that?

And now there is a big swarm of bugs circling the tree in the back yard. I AM NOT READY FOR THIS. IT IS MARCH.

* You know what eats bugs? A turtle.

That is totally a turtle. I promise.

I could really use a turtle around here right now.

* It’s possible I’ve mentioned this before, but I have a tendency to get hooked on specific foods. As in, I get so obsessed with them, I eat them every day and I crave them constantly. My current addiction is wedge salads. There is something so intoxicating about a half-head of cool iceberg lettuce luxuriating in a lazy river of creamy parmesan ranch dressing, bejeweled with rings of soft pink shallot and squares of crisp, salty bacon. I have been eating about five heads of lettuce a week. And much bacon. MUCH BACON.

* Did my use of the word “luxuriating” make you think of Toddlers and Tiaras? No? Just me, then?

* The second best thing about the wedge salads (the first best thing being the salads themselves) is that I now have a nice steady supply of bacon fat in my fridge.

Do you think that’s weird? I mentioned it in the company of several people a few weeks ago, and some of them gave me the “she needs to be institutionalized” face.

I don’t think it’s weird. I think it’s WONDERFUL. Bacon fat can enrich so many things! I get all drool-faced when I think about how rich and velvety my onion soup is going to be. Once I get over my wedge salad fixation long enough to make some onion soup, that is.

I have used the bacon fat to make lentil soup, however.   I’ve been recently obsessed with lentil soup, too. Lentil soup and wedge salads. I think that’s all I ate for a couple of weeks.

* I have finally found a reliable makeup remover. I don’t really wear a lot of makeup.  Just a little blush and some mascara; eyeliner and lip gloss if I’m feeling fancy. But I have the HARDEST time getting the mascara off my stupid lashes. For pale stumpy things, they sure get a good grip on the mascara.

The makeup remover in question? Those Neutrogena face wipes that Jennifer Garner is promoting all over the teevee. I didn’t hear about them from JGarn, though. I am pretty sure I heard about them from the Internet – maybe from you? – because I get about 98% of my info from the Internet.

Anyway: these suckers work. At least on stubborn mascara.

* Last week, for the first time ever, I went snow shoeing.

(Those are snow shoe tracks.) (And a tree.)

I don’t know what I expected, but it was a lot like walking.

* I suppose I should clarify that my vacation was two weeks long. We spent the first week in Florida. We spent the second in Montana. Probably I should have mentioned that earlier.

* If you are a) married or b) not married, you will likely already know this. But going on vacation can be really good for a marriage. It was SO FUN to just… hang out with my husband. I mean, our parents were around for a lot of the hanging out, which was great. But we also got to do fun stuff alone together. And eat delicious food together. And brave far too many flights together. And go skiing and snow shoeing and alligatoring together. And just enjoy each other without the specter of Work and The Hospital and Household Chores looming over us. My husband is pretty fun to hang out with, you know.

* Also, we watched the entire first season of Downton Abbey and most of the first season of Game of Thrones together. There is really nothing that brings a couple together like World-War-I-era British society drama and some fantastical intrigue.

* Can we talk about the gators?  My in-laws live in a gated community on a golf course. And the golf course abuts a pond of some sort. And there are LIVE WILD GATORS in the pondthing. GatorS as in Multiple Carnivorous Reptiles.

If you look closely at the left side of the water, you'll see TWO GATORS. They may look lazy, but they will bite you.

This is crazy, Internet. And yet, my in-laws have all these gators that just lounge near the golf course. Within simple slithering distance of golfers’ legs.

See! The top one is ACTIVELY BITING YOU! (Or cooling himself. Whatever. I'm not a scientist.)

The reason I have these photos? Is because we took our daily constitutional on a path that goes right next to the gator pondthing.  And I had my camera because the gators were there EVERY DAY and I knew to expect them.

How is this… okay? How do the people in my in-laws’ development not constantly fall victim to hungry gators? HOW?

* My husband and his parents were very nonchalant about the gators. TOO nonchalant, in my opinion.  Yes, I come from a part of the country where bears and wolves and cougars roam wild. So I get that The Wild is full of Wild Creatures, and that humans can totally co-exist with scary vicious animals who will for the most part leave you alone if you leave them alone.

But it’s not like there’s a field near my parents’ house that just has BEARS MILLING AROUND or anything. It’s not like my dad goes out to water the lawn and there are wolves taking a nap behind the shrubbery and he’s all “lah dee dah, wolves, whatever.” My mom doesn’t hear about a copse of trees that’s hosting a cougar family and purposely walk past it each day in order to get some sunshine and exercise.

No. If there are bears or wolves or cougars anywhere in the vicinity, they STEER CLEAR.

Are gators that different from bears and wolves and cougars? NOT TO MY KNOWLEDGE.

* I told Kristina about these the other day.

They have lemon curd INSIDE them!

They are the beautiful and delicious lemon-filled cupcakes I made for the Super Bowl. Yes, I realize the Super Bowl took place over a month ago.  Errr… nearly two months ago. Nonetheless.

We had about ten people over for the Super Bowl party. Not a single person ate a cupcake.

Which means that I ate them all.

(Not ALL. There are four sitting in a container in the freezer, waiting for me to remember to take one out to defrost it BEFORE I am in the mood for a cupcake.)

(To be fair, we had a LOT of food at our Super Bowl party. And we had a LOT of desserts. As in, my husband made brownies and two flavors of homemade ice cream AND one of our guests brought an ice cream cake. So my beautiful cupcakes didn’t really stand a chance.)

* Have you seen those toilet paper commercials about the “backup roll”? The whole point of the commercial – other than to sell toilet paper, I imagine – is to push this little decorative toilet paper cozy (cosie? cozie?) that holds the backup roll. Or may the commercial is selling the decorative cozy? I don’t really know. I just know that backup rolls are important. Not important enough for me to buy or want a toilet paper cozy, mind you. But important. There is NOTHING WORSE than not having a backup roll. It’s either a problem NOW or it’s a problem LATER when you’ve skipped into the bathroom without remembering that you ran out last time.

That’s why I try to convince my husband that we need more toilet paper every time we go to Target. My goal is to have 50 rolls under every cabinet in every bathroom at all times. A sort of Extreme Couponers stockpile under all my sinks.

Yep. I think I’m ending there. On backup toilet paper.

This may be the most random thing I’ve ever written.

[Do I have to say this? I bought all the Neutrogena wipes/Stalinist-era novels/toilet paper/cupcake materials/Amazon Prime memberships mentioned in this post with my own money because I wanted to. I am not being compensated for talking about them. And all the opinions expressed here are my own. But please: feel free to send me all the makeup removal products or mystery books or cupcake paraphernalia you want. I would totally love that.]

[Also, you should probably know that the best photos in this post were taken by my husband.]

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Friday Randomosity: Move It or Lose It Edition

Well, Internet, another week has soared past me like a giant pelican with a half-eaten salmon in its beak.

And honestly? I don’t even know if pelicans exist in the same geographic regions as salmon. But I’m not going to look it up because that’s what kind of week it’s been.

BUT there is a beautiful tree directly outside my window that has made the slow transformation from green to yellow to orange… and now the top half is scarlet… and it looks so beautiful against the bright blue sky that I can’t help but smile.

In other words, it’s time for some randomosity!

* First up – the Asheville post is COMING. I know it is tops on your mind. It’s actually completely written and set up in Word Press, complete with over 40 photos and over 2,500 words. (Yes, now you REALLY want to read it!) But when I was getting ready to post it, my husband looked over my shoulder and noticed that I was using a bunch of his photos… which, DUH, he takes much better photos than I do… And he wants to make sure that photo-stealing-type people (which obviously, does not mean YOU! But he doesn’t know you like I do) can’t copy his photos. So he wants to install some html code on my blog and zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. That is me falling asleep. Because once you get beyond basic computer-type things like typing and Googling, well, I turn into a drooling, eye-glazed idiot. I mean, we’re all very lucky I know how to post a photo to my blog. Or post a blog ENTRY for that matter.

Which is a long way of saying, I have to wait until my husband – who is now back at work BOOOOOOOOO – has a few minutes to find and install the appropriate anti-photo-stealing code on my blog. And THEN finally, after much fanfare, you will get to read my super-exciting vacation recap. And zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. That is YOU falling asleep because I’m pretty sure my vacation is of interest purely to me and possibly my mother-in-law who is adorably fascinated by everything remotely related to my husband and his life.

* My three favorite fall dramas are The Good Wife, Blue Bloods, and Parenthood. I am kind of obsessed with Parenthood and I managed to get my husband obsessed with it as well. I am more than a little bit in love with Crosby and Jasmine. The big problem with the show? It simultaneously makes me want kids and makes me NEVER want kids in a billion years. Although, to be honest, everything these days makes me feel that way. Which is a big difference from how I felt two years ago, which is: No kids, ever. Period. But now? Now, my ovaries are deeply conflicted.

* How did a lighthearted bullet about TV become so suddenly serious? Let us avoid any more discussion about the state of my ovaries.

* In good news, my husband got Christmas off! Which means we get to go to my parents’ house for the holiday. Yay! And my parents have kindly and generously offered to pay for our airline tickets as our Christmas gift, which is WONDERFUL. But now my husband and I are looking for plane tickets… And there are only a few flights to the airport near my parents (which is two hours from their house) and only a few seats left on each of those flights… And my husband hates flying – not that I like it AT ALL – so he’s very picky about number of connections and seat placement, which narrows our choices even further… And my mom mentioned that an airport in their town just opened up flights, which is GOOD… But those flights are on teeny tiny prop planes, which is BAD and also TERRIFYING… So now instead of being EXCITED and GRATEFUL, I am feeling ANXIOUS and OBLIGATED to find the cheapest flight even though that may mean making ten connecting flights and flying on a teeny tiny terrifying prop plane.

* Something has been stuck in my craw for a few weeks now… I went out – as in, to a bar – with a friend and her friend. Both girls are about 5 years younger than I am, 20 pounds lighter, and blond. While we were chatting, some Random Dude came up to Friend 2 and said, “Hey, you and your friend are so beautiful. Blah blah blah.” And he was talking about Friend 1. Who, admittedly, IS beautiful. But COME ON. I’m not saying I have any illusions that I am beautiful – only my husband and my dad think that. But I’m not horrifically ugly. And even if I WERE, what the hell, Random Dude? I know you are thinking with your Little Random Dude and not whatever fragments of a brain you may have… But in no way is it cool to approach three girls and say – within earshot of ALL of them – that only two are beautiful.

I think this is bugging me anew because I went out with Friend 1 again recently (who, by the way, is ALSO MARRIED and wears a giant diamond engagement ring and a wedding band) and it happened AGAIN. TWICE. Poor Friend 1… I mean, she was hideously embarrassed. It’s not her fault she’s beautiful. And clearly I am envious of her for her beauty… and my self esteem isn’t enough that I can laugh off these stupid Random Dudes. But I just think it’s poor form for people to do that. I would NEVER do that to someone. It’s hurtful. Even if the person is old and overweight and – god forbid – BRUNETTE, I would never point it out by way of complimenting the person right next to her for being NOT old or overweight or brunette. It’s enough to make me not want to go out with Friend 1, which is stupid. Because I should be able to get BEYOND that. I mean, you can’t go around comparing yourself to other people. You’ll usually come up short in some way. But really. It’s enough to give a gal a complex.

And now that I’ve got THAT off my chest, I am moving on.

* I had gravy for the first time in my life this past weekend. At IKEA. In the food court. It was surprisingly delicious. Especially when used as a dip for fries. Now I am not quite so apprehensive about making gravy for Thanksgiving. However, I still have yet to eat stuffing… I’m not looking forward to that.

* Speaking of Thanksgiving… With liberal help from you, The Pioneer Woman, and an episode of America’s Test Kitchen, I think I am going to try my hand at making some of Thanksgiving eats this weekend! I will report my findings slash failings slash successes.

* Something I have very little tolerance for is disorganization. I’m not talking about, like, a messy home. Lord knows I’m the master of the messy home. I have a pile of unfolded clean laundry sitting on the couch right this second in fact. But when it comes to work matters? Organization should be part of the job description, right? I mean, if you email me because you need me to find an email I sent you a few weeks ago or an email YOU sent ME a few weeks ago… Well, that drives me batty. Because clearly a) the item was not important enough for you to keep track of and b) your time is much more important than mine. That is all I will say about that, although I have many more thoughts on the subject. Many. More. Thoughts.

Instead of going on and on about it, I will direct you to this awesome comic by The Oatmeal.

* I have an IM addiction. I leave my instant messenger on from 9:00 to 5:00 so I can interact with graphic designers and clients and other people. And I am constantly hearing the little message notification noise… Even when no one is IMing me.

* What do you do when you buy some wine and it sucks? I’m not talking about a bottle being corked – which is undrinkable. I’m just talking about a wine that’s gross. Do you dump the bottle? Or do you do what I do, and drink it anyway?

It’s really weird. I’m so not the same way about food. If something tastes gross, I will throw it away with no compunctions. I mean, I’ll whine a little. But I’m not going to eat something yucky.

Yet with wine… It’s somehow different. I brought a bottle of a white blend back from my trip to Napa this summer and just opened it last night. And it was gross. I don’t know if it got old (in which case, that does not bode well for the winery I got it from)… Or if it is on the verge of corking… (Is that even the correct use of that term?) Or if I just thought it was better than it was. But… Yuck. And yet, I drank a whole glass. Now, the nearly-full bottle is still sitting on my counter, waiting for me to drink the rest.

* Do you do anything for Halloween? I think my husband is off that day, but my guess is we’ll just make dinner and watch TV shows off our DVR all night as per usual. I don’t think I’ve actually EVER gotten a trick-or-treater. This is what happens when you grow up in the boonies and then live in dorm rooms or apartments for 11 years. Of course, our lack of Halloween experience has not prevented us from buying plenty of candy. And eating it. By ourselves.

* I am going to a surprise party tonight. It’s filled me with anxiety ever since I first found out about it, even though the person whom we’re surprising is a person I see roughly once every six to eight weeks. When I went out for dinner with him and his wife a few weeks ago, I was so worried that I would blurt out the surprise somehow.  (I didn’t.) And now I’m fretting over the actual party. What if we park in the wrong spot and ruin the surprise? What if my husband doesn’t get out of work early enough for us to make it on time, and we get there just at the wrong time and ruin the surprise? What if I accidentally email the surprisee and ruin the surprise? (I don’t know if I even have his email address, so this is unlikely, and yet I’m still fretting about it.) What if he is reading this blog and I’ve ruined the surprise?

* I had a dream last night that I was eating candy corn. And the kernels (is that what you call them?) were made up of just the orange part. (The yellow part happens to be my favorite part of the candy corn.) (I know this is probably the equivalent of liking green M&Ms better than brown M&Ms.) It was terribly disturbing in the dream, like the world was irreparably flawed.

Now what the hell was my subconscious trying to tell me with THAT one?

* My husband likes to use the phrase, “Move it or lose it.” He’ll say this when I’m standing in front of the silverware drawer, chopping onions, and he needs to get a spoon. He’ll say it when I’m standing in front of the sink, brushing my teeth, and he wants to brush his teeth.

I GUESS I get what it means, in certain situations. Like, if you have your foot under one of those guillotine choppy things and someone wants to see the guillotine’s slicing action, you’d say “Move it [the foot] or lose it [the foot].” Because if you didn’t move your foot, it would get chopped clean off. But I don’t get that phrase otherwise. Certainly not in the context my husband uses it. (Although I suspect he uses it out of context purely to bother me.)

Likewise with “see you on the flip side.” The flip side? Does that mean “the other side of the day”?

Or “it just dawned on me.” I think of this as meaning something like, “the situation was just illuminated.” As when the sun rises and sheds light on a situation.

Or “as easy as pie.” What the hell does that mean? I’ve made pie before, and let me tell you: NOT EASY.

Sigh. English is full of weirdness. I love it, don’t get me wrong… But sometimes I just have to shake my head at all the common phrases I use that I don’t really understand.

What common phrases or sayings just don’t make sense to you?

* I’m thinking of getting my clients holiday gifts this year. My initial thought was to send them each a nice box of Godiva chocolates. But I’m not sure. Is that appropriate? Is it enough? I don’t want to be extravagant or anything, but I do want to thank them for their business. (Seriously. My clients are AWESOME.)

Do you have any thoughts on getting gifts for clients/boss-type people? Any gifts you’ve received from a colleague or business associate that you loved? Or hated, I suppose? Suggestions welcome.

And that, my friends, is all the randomosity I can handle for today. Unless you have some randomosity you’d like to share with me! I always enjoy OTHER PEOPLE’S randomosity.

Have a super weekend Internet! See you on the flip side. Whatever that means.

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